


every thought a thought of you

by sweatshirt



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweatshirt/pseuds/sweatshirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: We are built to live in each other. This means we are built to ruin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every thought a thought of you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for newrromantics' amazing femslash fic exchange! Prompt is a line from "Elegy Surrounded by Water" by Sara Eliza Johnson. Title from the song by mewithoutYou. 
> 
> Enjoy! This might actually be part one of a series, if any of you would dig that. 
> 
> If you have any comments/criticism, tell me here or on my tumblr: @wyndampryce.

_You built your castles on uneven ground, on the bones of other structures. It was only a matter of time before they came crumbling to the sea._

You move away, escaping the wreckage and the debris. You take the Amtrac to Cambridge and you don’t buy a return ticket. It’s easier, living in a world that prioritizes mental agility over appearances. You’re a new New Mona now, and you have the grades to prove it. 

Halfway through your sophomore year, you get a call. It’s from a number you haven’t even added to your new phone. A Rosewood number.

Mike makes small talk before asking where your dorm is. He wants to visit you. It’s such an open-faced question that you’re at a loss for words, for possibly the first time in memory. 

You always thought shame was some sort of myth, invented by people who were too scared to accept their inner monstrosities. But telling your high school boyfriend how you used him for a myriad of reasons he could never comprehend—that makes your cheeks redden. 

He begins to ask if you could have ever loved him, in a world without the wigs and spies and corpses.

“I think you know the answer,” you say, cutting him off. You don’t say “gay”, or “in love with someone else”, or her name, but he gets the message. 

“Right,” he says, and hangs up. 

 

Your bachelor’s degree in counterintelligence and unusual special skills earn you a job as a lobbyist, in Washington, right out of college. And it’s closer to perfect than you had expected. Your salary sufficiently covers the rent of a small apartment in a decent neighborhood. There’s even a cute thrift shop around the corner. 

All of your young coworkers are high-IQ, high-functioning sociopaths. Nobody really likes you because nobody really likes anybody, and for once it’s not some petty high school popularity contest. There aren’t any Emilys or Lucases. Your friends are too narcissistic to worship anyone other than themselves. 

After a few horrible first dates, you discover that while there are girls in Washington, there aren’t girlfriends. Or even girl friends. In some ways—in so, so many ways— you miss being fifteen. You miss that calm before the storm. Everything is pink and hazy and Hanna-colored in your memory of that summer. 

“So, what’d’ you study?” The girl across from you is pretty, if a bit boring. Even red hair and smoky brown eyes can’t make up for intellect or charm.

“Majored in poli sci with a minor in comp sci,” you reply.

“Wow. That’s cool—it sounds like a lot of work, though.”

“I’m used to the work. What about you? What poor choice of major brings you to DC?”

The girl laughs and begins to ramble on about French, and you have to interrupt her with a question in French halfway through. When she actually knows the language, you raise an eyebrow. Minimal personality required for a casual romantic relationship: check. 

Gillian (you finally learn her name) doesn’t really go away, and you wish you didn’t want her to. She gets close to you. She asks questions you can never answer. 

Although you fall asleep lying next to her every night, your dreams go in other directions. You wake up expecting blonde hair on the pillow next to you, and every morning you try to stop your heart from feeling disappointed.

After weeks of these feelings, it becomes too much. One morning, you wake up early– even by your standards. Gillian is fast asleep. You aren’t exactly an impulsive person, not in the ways those romantic comedy leads always seem to be. Your decisions are questionable (stalking four girls for months on end, for example) but thoroughly considered.

So you plan. Quickly. You write a note and leave it on Gillian's nightstand. You gather your bags, stop by your house to grab extra necessities, and run. Or more precisely, walk the train station, and board the next train to Grand Central Station. You looked up what city Hanna was in, but you didn’t even have to. She always rambled on and on about New York City. And while the oversized rats and sub-par air quality never attract you, you see its appeal when you arrive in Grand Central. You understand how New York has become the holy land for all those lost or desperate or deserted. 

(Hanna’s arms were your safe haven when you felt deserted and lost and desperate. You didn’t need to flee to a big city and escape the hometown bullies if she was next to you.)

You hail a cab and pass by the upscale fashion stores in Manhattan. You can’t turn back now. Others in your situation might worry at this point. There are good reasons to. You go over them in your head. It’s a work night. You might be fired. You haven’t seen Hanna in nearly five years. She still rightly hates you. She’s straight—ish.

You try not to care. You’re not traveling three hundred miles to ask her on a date. You know what answer she’d give. 

No, it's almost more pathetic. You need to see her face and make sure she's really the one. The one who's haunting you. It was all those little things that made you realize. Your new identity is even more of a sham than your previous facades. New Mona, the one who’s over Rosewood and over Hanna, could never exist as long as Hanna was still in the world. 

You might be rusty, but you still know how to stalk a girl down. You find yourself in a rundown apartment complex in the Bronx. Your heartbeat picks up when you knock on her door. 4A, you notice, and smirk a little at the letter.

“Coming,” she calls from the other side of the door.

She opens it, and you give her a smile.

“You’re not the pizza guy,” she blurts out, her expression shifting from excited to confused to something else entirely.

“Did you order pizza?”

“Oh. I guess I didn’t, actually.”

She shakes her head a bit and looks up. “Come in,” she says. You step inside. The apartment is smaller than your own in DC, but she’s furnished it beautifully. Hanna stares at you, bemused. “Mona,” she says. “Hanna,” you echo.

“Is… everything okay?” She hurries to the sofa, adjusting the throw pillows a centimeter so that it’s perfectly arranged.

“Yes,” you say, taking a seat. Hanna looks even more beautiful than she did back in high school. Her hair is shorter and layered now, and her eyes seem wiser. “Everything’s okay,” you say, because she doesn’t look convinced.

You tell her about college and Boston and Washington and your job. She listens patiently, a bit apprehensively. 

“I still don’t get why you’re here.” Confirmation: Hanna is as blunt as ever. You missed that.

“I do think a lot about what could have happened, you know. And I woke up today feeling like I needed to see you.”

“I mean, you’ve seen me.” She points at her body. There’s a hint of a playful smirk on her lips. It fades in seconds, though. She stares into your eyes, more intensely than anyone else has. Ever. 

“When I first got here, I was at NYU, I saw a girl at a party who looked like you. And I just... went home and I broke up with Caleb.” She bites her bottom lip a bit. “I wasn’t even drunk. I still loved him.” Hanna looks incredulous at her past self’s actions. 

“I came up with other excuses. I had terrible boyfriends for the past four years. I thought it was cause of Caleb. He’s probably cursing my OKCupid or whatever.” She pauses. Her fingers thread and rethread with each other. 

“Do you think it’s possible that you ruined me? For all my future boyfriends,” she adds. She doesn’t sound angry. Or maybe she never said anything, and the words she spoke were simply auditory hallucinations in your sick mind.

You want to kiss her. You don’t. You use your mouth for a better purpose: to speak. Somehow, the words cobble together, and a promise spills out. 

“It seems like we have to talk.”


End file.
